The Georgian predicate cleft

Abstract

This empirically focused chapter characterises the core properties of the predicate cleft in Georgian against a background of historical, dialectal, and wider South Caucasian data. Semantically, the cleft contributes a broad range of topic and focus readings (including emphasis, which we regard as degree focus). Syntactically, the copy involves category shift, and the relationship between copy and finite verb obeys restrictions on A-movement. Morphologically, a wide variety of mismatches are tolerated between copy and finite verb, though many others are robustly resisted. The combination of these crosslinguistically common and rare characteristics demonstrates that Georgian offers a fertile testing ground for current accounts of predicate clefts.